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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26921023">Sweet Hell</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/HP_Lovecats/pseuds/Coffin%20Liqueur'>Coffin Liqueur (HP_Lovecats)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brief Implied/Referenced Transphobia, Canon-Typical Violence, Drama, F/F, F/M, Game: Resident Evil 7, Gen, Horror, Multi, Trans Female Character, Trans Zoe Baker</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 01:28:40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,635</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26921023</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/HP_Lovecats/pseuds/Coffin%20Liqueur</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Ethan takes a third option.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ethan Winters/Mia Winters/Zoe Baker, Eveline &amp; Mia Winters, Lucas Baker &amp; Zoe Baker</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. The Choice</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“One left…? There can’t just be one left…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What the hell are we gonna do now…?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ethan already knew the answer.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Use the serum on him!” Zoe cries.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>There are no options. Ethan needs to free himself or die, and yet here Zoe is telling him to relinquish what they’ve both been fighting for all night. He twists in the air, scanning for her among fire and shadow, and heavy mold coils lash through water.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“You want me to cure him?” he asks, not forming it as a question.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“He’s too far gone; I think it’ll kill him!”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>It makes sense at the time. It wouldn’t be a pointless sacrifice. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Ethan is still frozen, breathing fast and hard, mind racing before something clicks and his fist squeezes tight around one of the syringes and in the first step of an automated process taking over, he lifts it, as he’s lowered down toward the open rumbling throat of Jack --</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He took Zoe by the wrist. His eyes flitted up to meet hers - they flickered widened and her jaw half-fell open.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He wouldn’t look at Mia right now.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He felt the air stir as she drew a pace back, and felt alarm spike him in the back of his neck, in a reflexive mix of guilt and the urge to </span>
  <em>
    <span>help </span>
  </em>
  <span>on hearing her suck in a breath that he knew wasn’t just that - but he didn’t look, instead watching to make sure he was precise as his vision dropped down again, he stuck the needle into Zoe’s arm, and he pressed the plunger down.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>He knows what everyone wants - he pulls the threads desperately together and disentangles them as he feels the heat and throb of blood rushing around his brain and pooled behind his skin while the spent syringe drops from his hand, as Jack thrashes with him in his tendrils stronger, then weaker, bellows becoming moans becoming gasps laying over with the cracks of tentacles stiffening and stiffening and stiffening --</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>It’ll be a shot in the dark, but not the first he’s taken all night…!</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ethan…?” Zoe said, distant, light. Looking at him like she was a rabbit who’d just noticed the other animal standing in front of her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Go,” he said.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her eyebrows arched and furrowed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He released her arm; it began to steadily fall.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ethan,” Mia said next, sweeping and breathy with a sting of confusion.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He acted on the kick of the urge this time.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>With a sidestep, he caught Mia’s arm this time; held it enough to give it a light swing in seeking sync. A wave of his other arm forward, in a light flourish.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Go,” he said. Harder, drier.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Zoe flinched lightly. Not pain.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Confusion flashing in front of her, too, he figured.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her shoulders squared; her eyes drifted downward as she gripped her wrist in front of her stomach - slid her hand up and rubbed her thumb just beside the injection site.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In a flicker, she was looking him straight in his face again. Eyes now heavier.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re our best shot at getting help.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Zoe held his gaze one more second. Two.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Before turning it out over her shoulder, to the little boat by the three of them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He felt a little gust of movement beside him again; as if by magnet-draw, he took a sidestep closer to Mia, loosening his grip and sliding it down till his hand caught in the tangle of her fingers and he secured it again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mia and I are </span>
  <em>
    <span>both </span>
  </em>
  <span>still infected,” he said. “And this is your home, right?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A short wispy gasping sound beside him. Zoe’s face grew ever-stiller and more grave.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A sense of certainty fixed itself in his chest as if via a spike in the split-moment before the girl nodded.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re right --” she said, a small bind in her tone releasing into a flyaway as her arms fell loose at her sides. She took one first step toward the end of the dock. Looked between Ethan and Mia and back again, lips thinning, nodding twice more before with a certain slow flourish-off of the turn of her head back out to the water, she continued. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“...You’re right,” she repeated. “About both things.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>One last hit to drive the decidedness of it in.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ethan finally flicked a look over to Mia and took some solace in the fact that he couldn’t tell if she disliked this or not. Her brown eyes were wide and blinking rapidly as she, too, chased looks between two other people, holding his hand back and leaning her weight to make for the boat once - coming back to center with another vaguely-questioning look back at him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He began to lean opposite the boat.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And the motor of the boat began to muffledly chug and thrum.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He and Mia both lifted their heads in time.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ethan, at least, gravely, coldly resolute.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“...Do you know how to get to town from here?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Zoe’s head lolled aside some. “Of course,” she said, with a look now almost-vacant through her bangs. “I lived here my whole life, you know…?” A trail-off that thinned and disappeared before Ethan could even begin to make much of the forced conversationality to it. “...Been a while since made it even </span>
  <em>
    <span>this </span>
  </em>
  <span>far to the edge o’ the property, but -- I remember things.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The end of the boat had already moved past the end of the dock.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He felt Mia tug him after it again. This time, he followed right along - two pairs of shoes somewhat-clumsily whumping and creaking forward on the wood till they came to its edge, seeing off the little motorboat, the girl on it twisted to look back at them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ethan took a breath in that fought against a subtle hardness in his lungs.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Put it into projection.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Good luck,” he called.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You too,” Zoe called back. She lifted her hand in a wave. “Hang in there!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She hadn’t seemed that far away till the sound of that well-wish and the running motor seemed to give way straight off to the sounds of insects chirping and trilling in the plants making islands out across the water.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And Mia’s soft-but-ragged, exhausted breathing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He gave her another look. Soft in… a quietly-apologetic spirit.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She kept her eyes out on the boat. He saw it all the same when she shut her eyes on a swallow. When her throat unsealed, riding her next breath out was “Do you trust her…?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He thought she might ask that.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>An </span>
  <em>
    <span>ache </span>
  </em>
  <span>clenching around that</span>
  <em>
    <span> driven-in spike.</span>
  </em>
  <span> He swallowed, too, quietly. “...I have all night,” he said. Lifted his free hand; gingerly, gingerly set it on top of the one he held and began to smooth it, small, repeating movements. “ -- She got what she want. Great. But I’m not seeing what she has to lose by sending in…” He shut his eyes, shook his head, trying and failing to grab for proper nouns. “...the government, or -- ”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“ -- We shouldn’t be </span>
  <em>
    <span>alone </span>
  </em>
  <span>out here.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It came out in a distant, drifting moan. Like a ghost.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her stance had begun to sway. She turned in limping, little hops, breathing now coming in and out through a half-opened mouth.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He noticed her tipping herself forward to be caught - caught ahold of her forearm to help her brace it just as it came up to lay against his chest.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mia -- …”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We’re gonna be a family,” she said, like she had when he had first arrived here, this time, a muffled, weary groan.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Disappeared with the rest of her face under sheets of tangled hair as she angled her head to rest it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When he looked up after her line of sight, it was to see the white of Zoe’s tanktop as one bright dot out on the murky horizon.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And with his heart now suddenly racing.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Interrupted Venture</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Zoe's blood raced, nerves <em>iced</em> between the <em>heat</em> of it and her humidity-balmed skin, for reasons both good 'n bad, as she coasted on forward into the swamp, and she looked around like she was visiting it for the first time.</p><p>Mind, that she was, in so long - and back when she <em>had</em> been able to come out this far on fishing trips and visits to Uncle Joe, well, it still wasn't ever as if she'd often been out quite this late into the <em>night.</em></p><p>She hadn’t been lying.</p><p>She knew her way - as she took in shapes that the biggest and oldest trees made when she passed by them at the right angle together, and the levels of ground rising over bends in the water, she began to make more and more predictions, all mappin’ towards a place where the foliage should start thinning, and eventually, a new dock would appear beside a house that would be robin’s egg blue, at the end of a road that led into town proper.</p><p>She used to play with the boy who lived there, back in elementary school - their families had still met from time to time, although she and he hadn’t quite talked so much since she renamed herself; anytime she wondered why, she liked and halfway willed herself to think that it was ‘cause of the idea of being friends with a girl on principle, or, less generously, that it was because she’d felt like “someone new”, rather than overthink certain alternatives.</p><p>She wondered if his family still lived there. She wondered if the house was still blue. She wondered if she <em>had</em> really not been far from the house in only three years.</p><p>After all, all this time and moonlight and room for uncertainty <em>was</em> enough to make the bayou feel <em>new</em>.</p><p>Seeing new sights was reminder, all right, that Ethan <em>had</em> done what he'd really done.</p><p>She was <em>cured</em> now - free. Free, free to go, her breathing quickened and her ribcage swelled higher and higher at the thought, was she <em>really</em> --</p><p>And then she stopped. Stopped blinking.</p><p>Held her vision at one open spot between trees, deer-like.</p><p>Nah -- ...she wasn't yet.</p><p>She didn't feel any different, for one - or <em>did</em> she? She still felt sick, and slowed, and <em>choked</em> down to her core - or was that health and tiredness, <em>or</em> was that simply the mold havin' yet to clear its way out of its system, now that it had died.</p><p><em>If</em> it had died, or died <em>yet.</em></p><p>She thought for a split second to hiss at herself for not knowin' more, before her searching mind recalled just how little she'd found in the case with the head beyond it itself, and a few scraps of paper with ink too diluted by water from three different sources to be readable beyond a few sentences packed with lingo well above the grade of her pharmaceutical studies, and she instead shivered at the not-knowing, in itself.</p><p>For a second thing, she in fact had good reason <em>not</em> to feel that she was revisitin' old haunts beyond all that which made it feel <em>new</em>. Good reason not to trust anything remotely familiar, even when recognition pieced itself together; she turned behind her, at one point, icicles <em>shootin'</em> up her back at a black shape standing shorter and sharper than any shape <em> should </em> between the trees through the hangin' mist, before she willfully, willfully processed, her distant and hazy and dubious and easily self-deceiving memories projecting over what she saw after a few beats, that it <em>had</em> been a tree, and had been broken after a round of weather.</p><p>...The environment had to be good for mold.</p><p>There was no tellin’, yet, whether or not Evie had turned <em>everywhere</em> Zoe, Mama and Daddy, and her brother had ever thought of as “<em>their</em> home turf” into <em>her</em> playground by now - whether by “right” or whether by the nature of everything.</p><p>She had a long ways to go till she was anyplace <em>safe</em> yet.</p><p>And once she was…</p><p>...Well.</p><p>That brought her to Point Three.</p><p>She swallowed.</p><p>Ethan had said that she was their best shot at getting help.</p><p>The three of them.</p><p>This hadn’t been just about her shot at escape since… hff; since Ethan had what - first managed to get outside, and she had to share the shelter of her trailer when not in her use, at moments across the night? Since he’d managed to get a component of the serum in his hands?</p><p>She wondered when she’d gotten in so deep.</p><p>But when was of no matter.</p><p>He was right; there were now three of ‘em who had somewhere to go, now, outta that horrible house. In fact, all along there had been at least two - she thought of Mia, huddling together with Ethan on the boathouse docks behind her, looking distantly-shaken and ragged and uncertain and questioning, and the front of her head burned with the contrast between the thought of her rocking in her cell, hurling herself at the bars when Zoe’d gone to ask her questions with her hair in her face, pounding and shrieking and roaring to be left be with a preternatural ferocity that’d had Zoe writing her off, right along with Mom and Dad.</p><p>There were three of ‘em, and of the three, Zoe was best-equipped to take it from here.</p><p>And in this moment, that felt very, very sad.</p><p>Oh, nowhere near sad enough that Zoe hadn’t more than a shred of confidence; Ethan had caught her at an all-time low of certainty that she’d ever get anywhere near this far. She sure weren’t squandering it <em>now</em>.</p><p>But as the lights of the house started to fade even in memory behind her, the balmy, sticky-as-hell summer night started to feel <em>cold</em> on her skin via air reaching to it in <em>veins</em> through thick, clinging slick-slimy layers of sweat and mold-choked airborne dampness.</p><p>Pffhuh - it had started to <em>attack</em> her, all right, too; she flinched at and winced away from a loud sound buzzing in her ear. At a faint itch on her forearm, she glanced down and <em>snipped</em> a small noise, nose scrunching, as she whacked a mosquito the size of the last joint of her finger, flattening it.</p><p>Worst of all, a dense, <em>dense</em> mist had begun to rise off of the bayou around her, and in her thoughts, she had lost the shoreline of landmarks that she had been following.</p><p>She leaned toward the side of the boat, eyebrows pinching and setting a loose bite around the inside of her lower lip; dusted the black smudge on her arm left by the bug clean as she turned the boat. A strip of darkness appeared between the shifting blues of water and air - wrong size and shape for her mind to register as a gator, and so she supposed she didn’t have to call it <em>just her luck</em> right about now on that front.</p><p>All the same, the <em>pinch</em> between her eyebrows tightened. Deepened. All while her eyes widened under it, darting side-to-side as she assessed the clearing <em>picture</em> of the mass she veered ever-closer to.</p><p>No rocks. No trees. For a moment, there was a swell in her gut, as she thought that maybe clear ground meant that she was already coming up on the old blue house, but a look into the fog ahead again revealed nothing but that fog itself, no matter how much she squinted into it trying to make out any kind of shape or shift in color in it. She turned her head back aside to the mass - she was close now, just a couple of arms’ lengths away. It stood out starkly enough to be solid <em> black </em>. It shone, moonlight catching on it in little pale flashes, and she thought maybe she’d at least found a large rock of some kind, on its own.</p><p>Then came the damp, turning, slithering sound of something shifting.</p><p>A <em>warning flag</em> began to flutter into movement as it rose in the back of her head; her eyes widened. Her heart fluttered, too, picking up its rate as it thought of big blood-and-oil-and-paint <em>splatters</em> of mold oozing and crawling and <em>pushing</em> and <em>pulling</em> across walls; man-shaped masses of teeth peeling themselves off of them and splattering against the floor. A <em>stabbing</em> sensation in her sternum told her that <em>she had been right</em> to think that the swamps weren’t safe; her heart <em>patter-patter-patter-pattered</em> faster, and her shoulders tensed and began to draw and quiver back.</p><p>As, sure enough, the mass began to <em>move</em>.</p><p>The moonlight on it shifted and rippled as it began to steadily twist and <em>turn</em>, the way a whale might in footage, the bayou beginning to ripple deep around and away from it. Zoe half-fell back with a sharp gasp <em>hitched</em> in; her hip hit the boat wall <em>sharp</em>, and she winced for a <em>fraction</em> of a second before she steered the boat back away from it, eyes instantly wide and <em>trained</em> on the shape that spun to <em>swim</em> into the swamp --</p><p> -- And a <em>bump</em> knocked her falling to the other side with a <em>cry</em> falling in on itself as she sucked it in - she caught herself once more, and <em>snapped</em> a look to the source -</p><p> -- And yet another sound <em>willowed</em> long and cold and shaking out of her.</p><p>Another shimmering, slick black shape rose, twisting, out of the water like a great, slow dolphin. She <em>flung</em> a look back to the other side; the first shape had reappeared, doing the same in tandem. The <em>cold</em> pricking into her body began to fast-pierce-trace and coalesce across her back from shoulder-to-shoulder as she flung checks aside each way, each way, each way, the shapes continuing to rise and fall and <em>close in -</em></p><p>The cold drove deeper and froze around and <em>flush against</em> her lungs.</p><p>The boat was <em>pinned</em> between them, now.</p><p>And <em>they</em> were steering.</p><p>“Evie -- ?!” she half-reflexively cried, voice wavering-high-yet-rough, and quick - a <em>desperate</em> beginning of a plea for her <em>life</em>, more o’ less; far from the first she’d been forced to make, the shame and rage of unfairness at it a long time gone away, despite her not knowing what to <em>ask</em> and finding <em>nothing</em> in continuing to look between the two black shapes that weren’t coming in close enough to <em>kill</em> her, nor tip the boat, still swimming alongside it no closer than to give it nowhere to freely go.</p><p><em>She can’t</em> kill <em>me anymore</em>, her mind told her as it replayed for her in <em>vivid color</em> the <em>fresh</em> memory of Ethan giving her that shot, the thought rippling again and again so hot and fast it practically audibly <em>echoed</em> in her ears, loud and low till her eardrums rang and she alarmed herself <em>further</em> with it - <em>she can’t kill me…!</em></p><p>Were they trying to turn her back…? Send her back to the house?</p><p>Couldn’t be as bad as it <em>could</em> be, then, <em>surely</em> - Mom and Dad were dead, now; she knew the house well enough that she’d been getting by, at least; Ethan hadn’t been infected long, and had shown he could fight; surely with three, now, one uninfected and the person worst off <em>favored</em> by the little monster infesting the place, they’d have a fairly hopeful chance of fightin’ off the <em>other</em> monsters, or… Lucas, even, if he came back from wherever he’d nicked off to after giving her and Mia one last fuck-you at the boathouse, long enough to -- find <em>some other way</em> to escape; find her another chance to get out…!</p><p> -- No. No. That <em>couldn’t</em> be it. That’d be much too easy…!</p><p><em>“Evie!”</em> she called again - practically a <em>squeak</em> that she <em>hated</em> to hear with that it rattled her more - as she turned to sit as <em>firmly stable</em> as she could against the floor of the boat, bracing a grip against one side and feeling a <em>jolt</em> shoot through her back at each tiny <em>bump</em> against the hull one way or another, glancing continuously between the masses. “Evie, <em>please!</em>” Could Evie even hear her -- “I <em>know!</em>” She turned her head skyward, eyes going round, <em>piercingness</em> of the edges of her words <em>hacking</em> at her throat. “I <em>know!</em> I <em>know</em> what I did was wrong -- just <em>please!</em>” <em>Could Evie even hear her…?</em></p><p>“Where are you taking me -- ?!”</p><p>
  <em>Could Evie even hear her?</em>
</p><p>It was an idea she hadn’t even stopped to <em>think of</em> yet, and now that she was, something that should have felt <em>that freeing</em> instead felt like <em>horrifying </em>abandonment, <em>much</em> too suddenly alone and <em>foggy</em> --</p><p>Another <em>bump</em> hit the side of the boat with a particularly loud, hollow sound, and she gritted a noise out at a new dimension of <em>heat</em> in the stab down her back. She narrowed her eyes and turned her head down again to check the position of the shape responsible, god help her, as if it was due <em>indignance</em> of all things...</p><p>But the heat didn’t have time to rise.</p><p>Hell, her attention didn’t even <em>make</em> it back to the shape.</p><p>Instead, as finally, she made out a change in the fog, her eyes drifted upward.</p><p>She took a good guess as to what it was, as darkness started to swell and thicken before her on a massive scale. She measured the distance out from home to here based on time and estimates, and remembered Daddy going out twice the night that Eveline came.</p><p>She hadn’t wanted to go so near to anywhere associated with the little monster.</p><p>Much less anywhere she could have <em>come from</em>.</p><p>And at it being where, evidently, Eveline wanted her to go, color and warmth began to trickle entirely out of her system, from top down, as she stared, only <em>dread</em> left in her prickling just as icy but numbingly <em>deeper to the core</em>.</p><p>The darkness in the mist ahead began to define itself, further and further. Rocks began to appear again; the remains of broken logs tangled against the tall, great, looming shape of a shipwreck.</p>
  </div></div>
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